Kelley Epstein of Mountain Mama Cooks is a blogger, personal chef, wife and mother. She lives in Park City, Utah and enjoys her high-altitude living surrounded by the outdoors. Kelley is not only a fantastic chef, but a wonderful, fun-loving person who loves butter and mayonnaise as much as we do.

Your slow cooker gets put to good use on this recipe for Apple-Pumpkin Butter. It is done over two days, first making apple sauce and then cooking pumpkin puree down until it turns into a rich, concentrated butter. I love combining apples and pumpkin as they are quintessential fall ingredients.

I don’t peel the apples as that’s where so many of the vitamins are, and this makes preparation much quicker and easier. You puree the applesauce so finely and then cook it down again with the pumpkin. I try to use organic apples if I can. The finished Apple-Pumpkin butter is delicious stirred into oatmeal or plain yogurt and equally at home slathered on a piece of zucchini or banana bread.

Place the apples in the slow cooker along with apple juice, ½ cup maple sugar, and ½ teaspoon cinnamon. Cook on low for 8 hours until apples are extremely soft.

When apples are cool, put half of them into the jar of a food processor and puree until smooth and until peels are undetectable. Transfer to a bowl and repeat with the other half of the apples. At this point the apples can be stored in the fridge for up to a few days.

When ready to turn the applesauce into apple-pumpkin butter, put the applesauce into the slow cooker along with the canned pumpkin puree, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, ground ginger, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, lemon juice, pinch of salt and ½ cup maple sugar. Stir with a wooden spoon until well incorporated and the pumpkin and spices are blended with the apple sauce.

Cook on high for 6-8 hours, stirring occasionally, until the butter is dark brown and reduced by about a quarter. At this point, taste the butter and if you feel that it needs to be a little sweeter, add up to ¼ cup more sugar until desired sweetness is achieved.

Transfer apple-pumpkin butter to pint size glass jars and store in either fridge or freezer. Apple-pumpkin butter can store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, in the freezer for up to 6 months.

Update (9/16/2013): Hamilton Beach does not recommend this recipe for canning purposes. The National Center for Home Food Preservation talks about canning pumpkin butters on their website. Please refer to this link for more information:http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/pumpkin_butter.html.”

Since this recipe is not for canning, the main difference you’d see with that switch would be flavor. You could substitute water or a mix of half water and half apple juice. Kelley assures me it’s not too sweet even with the apple juice. I hope that helps!

Jean, Hamilton Beach does not recommend this recipe for canning purposes. The National Center for Home Food Preservation talks about canning pumpkin butters on their website. Please refer to this link for more information:http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/pumpkin_butter.html. Thanks!